UTILIZATION OF CONSERVATION AREAS’ SECOND NATURE
Tuomo LINDHOLM
University of Eastern Finland, Finland, lindholm.tuomo@gmail.com
Ideas of pristine nature, national heritage, wilderness and biodiversity have been
essential for nature conservation. Nature has been represented to have intrinsic
value which originates from its romantic or ecological properties. Following these
ideas nature conservation areas have been represented as space that has been
excluded from economic use.
Resent initiatives for new national parks in Finland reflect a new hegemonic
discourse which is used alongside these older repertoires to justify nature
conservation. This ”utilization discourse” represents protected nature in an opposite
manor, as areas suitable for specific uses with significant economic benefits.
This paper analyzes how these newly rehabilitated use and exchange values of
protected nature collide with represented intrinsic values, on which national parks
and nature conservation have ultimately been founded on. Sustainability of this new
conservation ideology remains an open question. Is sustainability threatened when
material nature is represented as a plane object of use and even its intrinsic values
are subjected to mere tourist attractions?
It is undoubtedly clear that this use centered perspective impacts the spatial
assemblage of present and forthcoming conservation areas. What the impact exactly
is, is still under negotiation. National park initiatives and the following process that
resulted in founding of two new parks reflects the inner and outer conflicts of use
oriented nature conservation discourse. Initiatives reveals surprising coalitions which
have a common goal in limiting logging by founding new parks, while they mostly
disagree on the question of suitable ways of using protected nature.